Vascular surgeon Richard Kimble (Ford) comes home to find his wife
(Ward) near death after an attack by an unknown intruder who is still
in the house. Kimble grapples with the one-armed stranger, but is
unable to prevent his escape. Kimble’s wife dies of her injuries. The
police find Kimble spattered with his wife’s blood charge him with her
murder. Condemned by a 911 tape of his wife’s last words, Kimble is
sentenced to death by lethal injection. During prisoner transport via
bus to the state penitentiary, a group of convicts assaults a guard and
attempts to take control of the vehicle. The out-of-control bus is hit
by an oncoming train, allowing Kimble and another convict to escape,
each going their separate ways. Pursued relentlessly by U.S. Marshal
Sam Gerard (Jones), Kimble makes it to Chicago where he tries to blend
in with the rest of the city’s denizens. As Gerard dogs his every turn,
he realizes Kimble is trying to untangle the mystery of his wife’s
death and leads Gerard down the same trail, hoping to convince the
skeptical Marshal of his innocence.

This intelligent and entertaining combination of chase thriller and
character-based drama was a smash hit and critics’ darling back in
1993. With a top-notch cast giving excellent performances, and fine
Chicago location photography, this long-in-development project managed
to survive its messy scripting (much was written or revised on set) and
production challenges, delivering a coherent and satisfying thriller.

Based on ABC’s 1963-1967 hit David Janssen series of the same title,
this feature version keeps the essence of the idea while changing the
nature of some of the characters and the motives for the murder. The
film, established as a thriller, occasionally seems a bit stately in
its pacing, as it tries to combine the white-knuckle thrills of the
chase film with the episodic, character-based structure of the TV
series. It feels languorous at some times and rushed in others, as if
you’re watching a feature-film condensation of the series instead of a
freshly-produced movie.

These are fairly minor gripes, though, and the strength of the film
rests squarely on Harrison Ford’s shoulders and he proves more than up
to the task, giving us a solid portrait of a shattered man with nothing
to lose and a strong humanitarian core. Audience favorite Tommy Lee
Jones (along with his amusing crew, featuring Joe Pantoliano, Daniel
Roebuck, L. Scott Caldwell etc.) gets most of the laughs and his solid
performance earned him an Oscar. It should be said though, that while
the film is definitely entertaining and much more intelligent and
satisfying than your average big summer action movie, it’s not a great
film, and the number of nominations leveled at it (including Best
Picture) seems a bit odd, in retrospect. It’s an extremely
well-produced and -acted picture, but it doesn’t ascend to the level of
art. At least it’s free of the hyper-stylization plaguing recent action
films.

The popularity of Tommy Lee Jones’s Marshal Gerard lead to a Harrison
Ford-less sequel, (1998’s “U.S. Marshals”) focusing on another Fugitive
(Wesley Snipes) pursued by Gerard and his crew, this time without L.
Scott Caldwell, regrettably. The success of the 1993 version lead to a
short-lived 2000 revival of the series starring Tim Daly. Oddly, the
original series is still unavailable on DVD.

This HD DVD release delivers an excellent and extremely clean transfer,
but it’s not a showpiece, simply due to the number of close-ups and the
choice to use a fairly shallow depth of field in the photography. Since
the imagery doesn’t have a deep-focus look to it, the background
sharpness you expect to see revealed in the new format isn’t present.
This isn’t a flaw, just the nature of the photography. The recurring
helicopter overhead shots of Chicago are filled with detail and
clarity, where this transfer shines. It’s an extremely accurate
rendition of the theatrical experience—sharp imagery is displayed
exactly as it should be, and softer optical effects like Ford’s jump
from the bus as the train hits it and the establishing shot of the dam
have the slight quality loss inherent in the original effects. Image
stability is exemplary and it’s fairly free of artifacts or digital
noise.

The multi-channel surround track is a perfect match for the
film—exciting, loud and punchy when it needs to be, and predominantly
quiet and dialogue-focused for the majority of the dramatic scenes. The
audio encoding is solid (though there is the odd instance of peak
distortion from the center channel when played via Toslink), with
levels nicely balanced without further need of adjustment during the
feature. There are several scenes which make excellent use of
surrounds. They’re effective, particularly in the placing of
helicopters off-screen during overhead and peripheral searches and in
the beginning of the dam sequence. The involving sound effects build
suspense by bringing up the levels on the atmospheric surrounds in the
final couple of sequences. The sound and sound effects editing were
nominated for Oscars and this rendition feels faithful and worthy.

The bonus features are minimal but interesting. The “Intro” is a pretty
pointless under 2min bit of fluff showing Director Andrew Davis
synching up the commentary with Tommy Lee Jones who is being recorded
off-screen at a different location. The “Derailed” featurette is a 9min
deconstruction showing the work that went into setting up and filming
the train crash sequence. It’s mostly concerned with production
logistics, and refreshingly it was nearly all done live with little
visual effects enhancements. The featurette reveals a goof (depending
on your point of view) in the transfer to HD. Apparently in the
original DVD transfer from a few years ago, a crew person who was
visible in one shot after the train wreck was digitally removed when
they released the film on DVD. In the HD transfer, he’s back again,
which restores this goof that was present during its theatrical
release, but in doing so, it contradicts the featurette which boasts
that he’s longer there.

“On The Run” is an interesting 24 minute featurette which is mostly
talking heads, but provides interesting background on the surprising
difficulty in developing the property into a viable feature film and
has brief interviews from the primary cast and production personnel.
The best feature on the disc is the commentary by Andrew Davis. He
fills the running time with interesting behind-the-scene stories,
comments on technique and on-set decisions, notes on deleted scenes,
how effects were achieved and who some of the background extras are.
Tommy Lee Jones is also on the track, but contributes almost nothing.
It’s a shame Warners didn’t elect to include an episode of the original
series on the disc, but the series rights are owned by a different
studio.